“You are going for good?” he asked. “I mean, to remain away?”
“When we go,” she said, “it is very doubtful if ever I shall set my foot on English soil again.”
He drew a quick breath. It was his one chance, then. Her last words must be his excuse for such precipitation. They had scrambled down through an opening in the cliffs, and there was no one else in sight. Some instinct seemed to tell her what was coming. She tried to talk, but she could not. His hand had closed upon hers, and she had not the strength to draw it away. It was so very English this sudden wooing. No one had ever dared to touch her fingers before without first begging permission.
“Don’t you know—Helène—that I love you? I want you to live in England—to be my wife. Don’t say that I haven’t a chance. I know that I ought not to have spoken yet, but you are going away so soon, and I am so afraid that I might not see you again alone. Don’t stop me, please. I am not asking you now for your love. I know that it is too soon—to hope for that—altogether! I only want you to know, and to be allowed to hope.”
“You must not. It is impossible.”
The words were very low, and they came from her quivering with intense pain. He released her fingers. She leaned upon a huge boulder near and, resting her face upon her hand, gazed dreamily out to sea.
“I am very sorry,” she said. “My uncle was right after all. It was not wise for us to meet. I ought to have no friends. It was not wise—it was very, very foolish.”
Being a man, his first thoughts had been for himself. But at her words he forgot everything except that she too was unhappy.
“Do you mean,” he said slowly, “that you cannot care for me, or that there are difficulties which seem to you to make it impossible?”
She looked up at him, and he scarcely knew her transfigured face, with the tears glistening upon her eyelashes.